American WAKE experimeNt (AWAKEN)

Technical Report · Fri May 01 00:00:00 EDT 2020

OSTI ID:1806419

Moriarty, Patrick ^[1]; Hamilton, Nicholas ^[1]; Debnath, Mithu ^[1]; Herges, Tommy ^[2]; Isom, Brad ^[3]; Lundquist, Julie K. ^[4]; Maniaci, David ^[2]; Naughton, Brian ^[2]; Pauly, Rebecca ^[1]; Roadman, Jason ^[1]; Shaw, Will ^[3]; van Dam, Jeroen ^[1]; Wharton, Sonia ^[5]

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1. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
2. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
3. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
4. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
5. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

The American WAKE experimeNt (AWAKEN) is an international multi-institutional wind energy field campaign to better understand wake losses within operational wind farms. Wake interactions are among the least understood physical interactions in wind plants today, leading to unexpected power and profit losses. For example, Ørsted, the world’s largest offshore wind farm developer, recently announced a downward revision in energy estimates across their energy generation portfolio, primarily caused by underprediction of energy losses from wind farm blockage and wakes. In their announcement, they noted that the standard industry models used for their original energy estimates were inaccurate, and this was likely an industry-wide issue. To help further improve and validate wind plant models across scales from individual turbines as well as interfarm interactions between plants, new observations, such as those planned for AWAKEN, are critical. These model improvements will enable both improved layout and more optimal operation of wind farms with greater power production and improved reliability, ultimately leading to lower wind energy costs.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States); Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Wind Energy Technologies Office
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-07NA27344; AC36-08GO28308; AC05-76RL01830; NA0003525
• OSTI ID: 1806419
• Report Number(s): LLNL-TR--806278; NREL/TP--5000-75789; SAND--2020-4296; 1011243
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

17 WIND ENERGY
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY